NCsoft buys City of Heroes, builds a dedicated dev house for it

Cryptic Studios has released its superhero MMORPG into the loving arms of …

On Tuesday, NCsoft announced the acquisition of Cryptic Studio's superhero MMORPG, City of Heroes. This acquisition includes the entire City of Heroes IP and brand, including City of Villains.

In the same announcement, NCsoft also revealed that they have founded a brand new studio in Mountain View, California—they're calling it NCsoft NorCal—to exclusively manage ongoing City of Heroes development.

... what I can say is that we're building this new studio not just to maintain the status quo. We're looking beyond the normal slate of free Issues for City of Heroes. We want to use City of Heroes as a focal point and really build on this franchise.

NCsoft NorCal joins Carbine Studios, founded by NCsoft last month. Carbine Studios is currently working on an as yet unnamed MMO project.

Every member of Cryptic's City of Heroes team has been offered a position at NorCal, and nearly all of them have accepted, so impact to the game's fundamental structure should, hopefully, be negligible. Matt Miller, lead designer on the City of Heroes project and formerly with Cryptic Studios, said, "We're thrilled to be bringing the CoH franchise to the next level. And we couldn't be more pleased to be working completely under the NCsoft banner."

Joystiq's Massively blog is also reporting that to celebrate the transition, active City of Heroes subscribers will also receive a number of benefits, including free copies of City of Villains (if you don't already have it) and hefty prestige bonuses for Supergroups.